A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence · HackerPapers discussions

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — HN submission

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:39:20 GMT

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by thomasdziedzic

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:15:10 GMT

> stop repeating that. first, it isn't true that intelligence is barely defined. https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 I don't think he should stop, because I think he's right. We lack a definition of intelligence that doesn't do a lot of hand waving. You linked to a paper with 18 collective definitions, 35 psychologist definitions, and 18 ai researcher definitions of intelligence. And the conclusion of the paper was that they came up with their own definition of intelligence. That is not a definition in my book. > second a definition is obviously not a prerequisite as evidenced by natural…

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by nh23423fefe

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:02:36 GMT

stop repeating that. first, it isn't true that intelligence is barely defined. https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 second a definition is obviously not a prerequisite as evidenced by natural selection

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by PeterisP

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 17:32:33 GMT

First, "artificial intelligence" is the name of the field of study that tries to build systems that act intelligently, not a term for referring to the produced systems. Even if some outcome isn't (or wasn't) yet particularly intelligent, the name of the field is entirely appropriate since that's the goal which it is striving to approach. Second, the general consensus of what "intelligence" means in the AI field is approximately the Legg&Hutter "Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments." from https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 . It's worth noting…

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by PeterisP

Wed, 03 May 2023 14:36:00 GMT

I think the Legg&Hutter definition "Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments" [1] is quite relevant for this issue - once we consider not a technique for a specific task, but a single system adapted for a variety of tasks and which (and this is the key part!) we also expect to perform well on a new task handed over to it, then that does mean that we are trying to build systems that are explicitly "more intelligent" according to this definition. [1] 2007 Shane Legg, Marcus Hutter A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence…

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — HN submission

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 21:50:34 GMT

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence

2 points; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by sinenomine

Sun, 21 Aug 2022 03:22:24 GMT

> It is a term gaining in popularity due to this difficult to define definition and allows for more a porn like definition > Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and many others have been contemplating the definition of intelligence for centuries and we're still not -quite there Given the decade-old, seminal, widely cited papers by Legg (co-founder of Deepmind) & Hutter (long-term professor of ANU with multiple awards, currently researcher at Deepmind) titled "Universal Intelligence: A Definition of Machine Intelligence"[1] and "A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence"[2] and the…

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by andreyk

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 15:54:16 GMT

FYI, there are a ton of definitions of 'intelligence', some fit with what AI algorithms can do, some don't. I found reading 'A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence' quite interesting myself https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639

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A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — HN submission

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:25:42 GMT

[Legg, Hutter] a Collection of Definitions of Intelligence (2007)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence — mentioned by calvins

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 03:52:27 GMT

Shane Legg (a DeepMind founder) and Marcus Hutter collected and categorized 70 different definitions of intelligence: http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3639 Their attempt at a definition that synthesizes all the others is: > Intelligence measures an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments. - S. Legg and M. Hutter

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